ARTS BRIEFING

By Lawrence Van Gelder

Published: September 1, 2004

HIGHLIGHTS

CHANGE AT SALZBURG -- The German theater and opera director J?n Flimm, below, was named yesterday to succeed Peter Ruzicka as artistic director of the annual Salzburg Festival. The festival's announcement said Mr. Flimm would assume the post on Oct. 1, 2006, for a term running through Sept. 30, 2011. The 2007 season is the first for which he will be responsible. Mr. Flimm, 63, who produced the Metropolitan Opera's ''Salome'' in March, has just finished three years as the director of theater at the Salzburg Festival, where he has been staging theater and opera since 1987. At the board meeting where Mr. Flimm's appointment received unanimous approval, Peter Schmidl, a clarinetist and business manager of the Vienna Philharmonic and artistic director of the Pacific Music Festival, was appointed director of concerts at Mr. Flimm's request. For his final season in Salzburg, Mozart's birthplace, Mr. Ruzicka, who announced in March that he would step down in 2006, said he planned to produce all 22 of the composer's operas and oratorios to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth.

FACTS ABOUT FICTION -- Clutching their copies of the longtime best-selling Dan Brown novel ''The Da Vinci Code,'' tourists are turning up at the Louvre in Paris, scene of a pivotal murder, and at the St.-Sulpice church on the Left Bank, where a brass marker and stone obelisk play roles in the story's quest for the Holy Grail, The Associated Press reported. As a result of the novel's popularity, tours are now guiding fans of the book to its sites and through theories about Leonardo works like the ''Mona Lisa.'' Ellen McBreen, a Harvard-educated art historian and founder of the tour service Paris Muse, said she challenges some of the theories in the novel but tries not to undermine its joys during her popular ''Cracking the Da Vinci Code at the Louvre'' tour. But at St.-Sulpice, the Rev. Paul Roumanet has posted a sign for the estimated 10,000 fans of the novel who have visited the church since Easter. It says, ''Contrary to fanciful allegations in a recent best-selling novel, this is not a vestige of a pagan temple.''

FILM BAN LIFTED -- Israel's High Court has overturned a ban on a ''Jenin, Jenin,'' a documentary film by the Israeli Arab Mohammad Bakri about the Israeli Army's retaliatory invasion of a West Bank refugee camp where scores of Palestinians and Israelis were killed in 2002. In its decision the court, though calling the film a ''propagandistic lie,'' said the Israeli film board did not have ''a monopoly over truth.''

POP PEOPLE -- The new Eminem album, ''Encore,'' is to be released on Nov. 16 by his Interscope Records label, Reuters reported. The rapper's album, his fourth, is a follow-up to ''The Eminem Show,'' a 2002 release that made its debut in the No. 1 spot on The Billboard 200 chart and has since sold 9.2 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. When Cher began her ''Farewell Tour (Never Can Say Goodbye)'' in June 2002, it was to run for 49 performances. Now that it is in its 27th month after nearly 250 shows, Cher, 58, has issued a statement saying that she will say farewell to the farewell tour in Australia with shows in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, beginning on Feb. 26, Agence France-Presse reported. Once Rod Stewart and Ron Wood belonged to the Faces, but that was before Mr. Stewart, now 59, began focusing on his solo career, and Mr. Wood, now 57, joined the Rolling Stones on their 1975 tour. On Monday night they were reunited with Ian McLagan, also of Faces, in a show at the Hollywood Bowl, Reuters reported.

CASTING ABOUT -- Jimmy Smits will play a three-term Houston congressman with presidential aspirations when the White House drama ''The West Wing'' returns to the NBC lineup on Oct. 20, The Associated Press reported. It remains to be seen if his character will fill the Oval Office vacancy after President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) completes his second term, but no matter what happens, ABC, where Mr. Smits starred in the police drama ''N.Y.P.D. Blue'' from 1994 to 1998, says he will return to the network to star in his own series and produce other shows after his political career on ''West Wing'' ends.

FOOTNOTES

The cabaret star Karen Akers will perform her acclaimed show ''Time After Time'' and selections from ''If We Only Have Love,'' her new album of theater songs, at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall in East Hampton, N.Y.

Photos: Visitors to the Louvre, where a murder takes place in ''The Da Vinci Code'' by Dan Brown, are quizzing tour guides about the novel. Leonardo's ''Mona Lisa'' is there. (Report, below left.) (Photo by Jack Dabaghian/Reuters)